Miqin Zhang
University of Washington, WA·Biomedical Engineering
Tooth decay and tooth loss are common, and today's fixes, bridges and implants, replace a tooth's shape without restoring its living biology or full function. Rebuilding a working tooth from cells has been shown in animals using embryonic cells, but no one yet knows how to do it with a cell source suitable for humans.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Materials Science
Biology
- Topics
tooth regeneration
dental tissue engineering
human induced pluripotent stem cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Test how the composition and stiffness of chitosan–alginate (CA) scaffolds control human induced pluripotent stem cell self-renewal, and whether optimized scaffolds support long-term growth of tooth epithelial stem cells and neural crest cells.
- Differentiate hiPSCs into odontogenic epithelial stem cells (OESCs) and neural crest cells (NCCs), then co-culture them in CA scaffolds to identify the epithelial–mesenchymal signals between the two cell layers that drive tooth formation.
- Implant scaffold-grown tooth germs into an orthotopic mouse model, where tissue is placed in the jaw site where teeth normally grow, to test whether hiPSC-derived cells form tooth tissue in a living animal.
More about the research
A promising option is human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs): adult cells reprogrammed so they can become almost any tissue in the body. Their use is held back because stem cells need the right surroundings to grow and specialize, and because the signals that steer cells to build a tooth are poorly understood.
Why it matters
People who lose teeth to decay or injury now rely on bridges and implants, which cannot restore a tooth's living tissue. Growing tooth germs from human induced pluripotent stem cells on natural-polymer scaffolds could eventually offer a biological replacement, including enamel regeneration from a human cell source. The work may also show how tooth-specific cell lineages are chosen during development.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mark Grimes
University of Montana, MT·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether seeding human neural crest stem cells in 3D hydrogel scaffolds with extracellular matrix components identified in organoids makes craniofacial cartilage faster and more reproducibly than self-organizing organoids.
Brenda Ogle
University of Minnesota, MN·Biomedical Engineering
Identify growth factors secreted by epicardial progenitor cells that boost proliferation of hiPSC-derived heart muscle cells, using gene editing and high-throughput proteomics in a 3D-printed layered cardiac tissue.
Quinton Smith
University of California-Irvine, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Test how paracrine signals and mechanical cues guide early cell fate decisions, using micropatterned induced gastrulation models of human induced pluripotent stem cells confined to defined geometries.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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